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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

An Anatomy of Error II

Last week I provided a link to the first installment of An Anatomy of Error from New Directions, published in 2003. This week I present the second, a gloves off bit of theological apologetics. Here is an excerpt:

But the ‘problem’ of Jesus need not be framed in radical feminist terms; it is, in fact, endemic in the whole movement. Since it is axiomatic for supporters of women’s ordination that a male priest cannot adequately represent women, the question naturally and inevitably arises: how can a male incarnation?Read the whole thing, and feel free to comment here on The Continuum.

8 comments:

Much of the WO movement is sucessful because they were sucessful in redefining terms. Scripture becomes "man's reaching out to God" instead of God's revelation to man. Tradition becomes the "lived experience of the faithful". So, with a wink and nod, the WO advocates can say they are being faithful to Scripture and Tradition. The man in the pew barely knew what hit him.

Of course, with all this redefinition one ends up "redefining" himself out of Christianity. But I don't think many of them really care. Which, as the first article suggested, means that one party in the "conversation" isn't a "true player". Its like playing a football game (American football) where one side decides that playing offsided is perfectly legal.

Albion, you either have to segregate the sexes into separate congregations, or accept that the priesthood as a whole is only complete and therefore properly representative of humanity when both sexes (and all proclivities) are allowed into it. At least, that's what I think their logic is, but I write as a woman who always felt excluded by inclusive language, so I expect that, in the eyes of some, my own logic is suspect.

Albion, there's not too much to be said by me about the inclusive language issue, apart from the fact that as a young'un I paid attention in school when taught such things as 'everyone must take his book' is correct and 'everyone must take their book' is not because of disagreement of number, that the masculine functions as common gender singular, and the 'man' as a generic term for humanity is just an accident of language, either because it's actually a different word from the word for a male human being, except that, unlike the German the words are homonymous (further and in the alternative, I expect it's like 'dog' and 'horse', where the term for the male animal just happens also to serve for the whole species). Having learned these lessons without excessive pain, I simply became offended that the Church started to mess up language (about which i'm a bit sensitive) in order to pander to ignorant people who apparently hadn't paid attention in school. I felt somewhat insulted that women are treated as a 'victim' class for whom something as basic as language has to be turned inside out. I do not want to form part of such a class, and consequently feel excluded.

Now, where's the priest with the cojones to call me 'man' on Ash Wednesday?

>Now, where's the priest with the cojones to call me 'man' on Ash Wednesday?<

Ah, you've noticed that problem. God called their name Adam, so, yes "remember o'man..." should be said to both sexes.

The important point made by the New Directions piece leads us to understand WO as an attack on the Incarnation. The sight of a woman trying to play the role of the priest denies that the salvation of all mankind (again, both sexes) is the work of the man Christ Jesus, representing the whole human race.

George Orwell in "1984" made a compelling statement about how distorting language in order to distort thinking is ultimately dehumanizing. If the language cannot be depended upon to carry meaning with some kind of consistency, discourse becomes impossible. To make language serve ideology (even if the ideology be correct) is in and of itself an evil. It is thus simply impossible to argue rationally with the current crop of revisionists, as they will use no other form of language but the one they have distorted so as to eliminate opposing views.

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Words Worth Reading

“Evangelism is to so present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that men might come to trust Him as Savior and serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of His church.”

William Temple, the 98th Archbishop of Canterbury (1942–44)

"My single appeal will be to the Holy Scriptures. And yet, I am sure that it will be hard to gain entrance to ears and minds already filled, unfortunately, with a prejudiced opinion." - Niceta of Remesiana (335-415), a Serbian bishop of old